'Untitled', John Braley

2009, Mixed paint and resin on canvas, 91.2 x 121.5 cm

Artist's statement

My paintings are all about how we relate to nature in an urban, technological age. The more we live in cities and cocoon ourselves from the natural world, the more we become separated from it. It has almost become a commodity, something that we have come to see as separate from ourselves.

I look to examine nature not as a pretty scene (as in traditional landscape painting), but as an intangible, isolated other, a concept or raw energy rather than something defined and solid. There are hints of horizon lines and figurative suggestions - this blue painting might remind one person of the sea, another of smoke from a fire, or the depths of a forest - but the objective is to use abstraction to tap into something more amorphous
and primeval.

This is rooted in my painting process. I paint with my hands and tools rather than using brushes, working the paint in an almost trance-like state to create
something sublime, organic and fluid. But at the final stage, I seal the works in resin, creating a physical barrier between the viewer and the abstract natural ideal that in
some way reflects our state of separation from it.